May 5, 2008

Moving Forward...

I haven't posted here for a while, and maybe that's because I've been wanting to follow up on the last "news" ("Scouting Out a Location"), posted here in February. Well, there really hasn't been "news" on which to follow-up, until recently. I can now report that we have made some strides on one hand, but have also suffered a couple fo setbacks on another. As for the good news, we have hired an architect, Stuart Savel of Virtual Habitat, Inc, in Chester. Thankfully, Stuart donated some of his time in the early stages to meet with us and go over our plans. He comes to us with a good amount of experience working with local community organizations, most recently with the Brattleboro Museum & Arts Center. With Stuart's help, we now have a design for a 3000 square foot building that is inviting, functional, and energy efficient. With that in mind - energy efficiency, that is- we will be utlizing the free consultation services provided by Efficiency Vermont. We hope that this partnership will help us identify funding sources for taking energy efficient measures in regard to lighting, HVAC, and other electrical needs. We are learning as we go.

As for setbacks, the big one is that we have received an estimate from Comcast (the cable company) about moving our fiber upstream feed (for sending a signal out of our master control to their headend). The estimate is far more than we can afford, and this is disappointing. There is some hope that we will be able to negotiate on this amount, or at least secure some funding to pay for a portion of the cost. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

This also brought up some other questions involving our budget constraints and what our options might be for funding possibilities. Whether it's small time community-based fundraising, big fundraising events such as a telethon, or grant seeking, we need to get creative. That shouldn't be a problem. I just hope it translates into enough so we can keep moving forward.